The teaching of music composition in Italy during the nineteenth century continued to make great use of partimenti. But during the course of the century, partimenti gradually lost their importance as guides to improvisation, transforming instead into blueprints for a written-out practice. Prominent musicians and teachers like Pietro Raimondi, Pietro Platania, and Raimondo Boucheron tried to merge the partimento tradition with the harmonic and formal innovations of their own era. Raimondi and Platania, significant exponents of the late Neapolitan school of composition, searched for innovation from within their own tradition. Boucheron, in Milan, deeply influenced by French and German theorists, used partimenti as a medium through which he could introduce elements of Romantic harmony. The partimento lessons of all three display not only a musical sophistication that merits our attention today, but also an insider's perspective on issues in nineteenth-century Italian composition.
